Bedlam changes
The Sooners and Cowboys will meet earlier next year.
The way-too-early 2017 Big 12 football preseason poll was released Tuesday.
Not by the coaches. Not by the media.
This prognostication came from the conference office, which has the Bedlam schools ranked 1-2, in no stated order. That was made clear by the Big 12 schedule, which has moved the OU-at-OSU game to next Nov. 4.
Bedlam has become not just a Thanksgiving weekend or December staple, but a de facto Big 12 championship game. The Big 12 became a 10-team league playing a nine-game conference schedule in 2011; three of the six Bedlams staged since have been winner-take-all for the Big 12 marbles, including the last two.
Now the Big 12 has instituted a facto championship game, in Arlington on the first
Saturday in December, and since an immediate rematch seems to be the sum of all fears, the 2017 schedule had to be built getting Bedlam far removed from December.
So on Thanksgiving Saturday, OSU hosts Kansas and OU hosts West Virginia.
Doesn’t say much for the Mountaineers’ prospects. West Virginia is 10-2 this season and swept the Big 12, save for the Oklahoma schools. But WVU starts 13 seniors; it will be hard for the Mountaineers to crack the Big 12’s top two.
The other Big 12 regular-season finales — Baylor at TCU, Texas Tech at Texas, Iowa State at Kansas State — seem safe from launching a rematch. So maybe the conference that usually can’t get out of its own way will be spared the ignominy of a repeat title game.
The Nov. 18 games seem about as safe. Iowa State at Baylor, OU at Kansas and TCU at Tech don’t figure to be battles of contenders, but you never know with Kansas State at OSU and Texas at West Virginia.
The zeal to avoid immediate rematches is a little strange. We had a near-immediate rematch for the 1996 national title game. That year, Florida State and Florida were pitted in the Sugar Bowl right after the Seminoles beat the Gators 24-21 on Thanksgiving Saturday. That ended Florida State’s regular season; Florida went on to win the SEC championship game, then routed Florida State 52-20 in the Sugar shoot-out.
Ten years later, Ohio State beat Michigan 42-39 in a Nov. 18 battle of unbeatens, and the Great Lakes region mounted a campaign to get both in the two-team playoff. Florida was picked over Michigan and beat Ohio State in the national title game.
Truth is, an immediate rematch is not nearly as strange as a round-robin schedule that sets up the top two teams for a playoff game.
The last two seasons would have been Bedlam rematches in Arlington. That would have been largely uninteresting in 2015, in the wake of a 58-23 Sooner rout in Stillwater. But what would have been so bad about an immediate Bedlam rematch this season? OU won 38-20, but with Mike Gundy going more Robin Leach than Robin Hood. Gundy left his sword at home, the Cowboys weren’t aggressive and the Sooners spurted away after a halftime tie.
A Bedlam rematch would have been fascinating from a schematic and emotional standpoint.
But it’s not to be. For now, Bedlam is gone from its late-season perch, which was not an unassailable tradition. A late-season Bedlam has gone in and out of fashion over the decades. So it could return, perhaps even soon, if either of these teams falls from grace in the eyes of the Big 12 office.